Darkness Descending

But, for the first time in the fight against Algarve, the Unkerlanter armies were moving forward. Leudast was almost inclined to cheer every time snow or freezing rain came pelting down, even if he had to endure them out in the open. He knew Marshal Winter had done as much to stop the redheads as Marshal Rathar had.

Somewhere not far away, eggs began bursting. The Algarvians holed up in the village northeast of the trench in which he huddled weren’t about to give up without a fight. They had plenty of egg-tossers and, no doubt, plenty of stubborn soldiers, too. A wounded man started screaming not far away. Leudast clicked his tongue between his teeth. The Algarvians might be retreating, but they weren’t making life easy for their foes.

Captain Hawart came up to Leudast, leaving tracks behind him in the snow. Hawart had started out commanding the company Leudast now led. These days, the captain was in charge of a brigade’s worth of men. He hadn’t been promoted at all and was doing a senior officer’s work on a junior officer’s pay.

He’d also grown forgetful like a senior officer, for he called, “A good day to you, Magnulf.”

“Magnulf’s dead,” Leudast said. Had he been looking out of the hole he’d shared with his sergeant when the egg burst in front of it, he would have been the one who didn’t come out. Luck, he thought. Nothing but luck. “I’m Leudast.”

“Well, so you are.” Hawart took off his fur hat and whacked himself in the side of the head. “And I’m Marvefa, the fairy who makes new leaves grow every spring.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit, sir--you look just like her,” Leudast said, and Captain Hawart rocked back on his heels and laughed. He was a pretty good officer, and didn’t slip very often. Leudast went on, “What now?”

Hawart pointed ahead, toward the village from which the Algarvians were still tossing occasional eggs. “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to throw them out of that Midlum place,” he answered. “We’re supposed to have behemoths coming up to give us a hand, but we’ll take a whack at it whether they do or not.”

“Aye, sir,” Leudast said resignedly, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “If they don’t show up, we’re going to leave a lot of dead men in the snow in front of Midlum.”

“I know.” Captain Hawart sounded resigned, too. “But those are the orders I got, so that’s what I’m going to do. Even if we get slaughtered, we help the kingdom.”

“Huzzah,” Leudast said in tones that sounded like anything but celebration.

More often than not, Hawart would have laughed again and agreed with him. Today, the captain said, “Like it or not, it’s true. We’re doing our best to shove our way back into Grelz. This attack--and we’re just part of it--is supposed to keep the Algarvians from moving reinforcements down there.”

“All right, sir,” Leudast said. “Once I’m dead, I’m sure I’ll be glad to know it was for some good reason.”

“Probably because I hit you over the head with a rock.” But Captain Hawart was laughing again. He slapped Leudast on the back. “Have your men ready. We move before sunup, with the behemoths or without “em.”

“Aye, Captain.” Leudast didn’t expect the behemoths. The whole course of the war had taught him not to expect them. There were rarely enough to go around; more stretches of line needed the great beasts than could have them. He got his company ready to attack Midlum without them. For once, he was glad he had only a handful of veterans. The new troops would go forward without knowing how unlikely they were ever to get into the village.

And then, in the middle up the chilly night, the behemoths did come up to the front, chainmail clinking below the heavy blankets that helped their shaggy fur keep them warm. Starlight glittered off their long, sharp, iron-shod horns. Thanks to the great snowshoes attached to their feet, they had little trouble making their way over the drifts.

Real hope--a strange feeling--began to rise in Leudast. “We’re going to do this,” he told his men. “We’re going to kick the redheads out of that village, we’re going to chase them across the fields, and we’re going to slaughter them. This is what they bought for coming into Unkerlant and trying to take away our homes. Now they’ll pay full price--every last copper.”

His own home village, not too far from what had been Unkerlant’s border with Forthweg, lay far to the east of where he squatted now. He wondered how his kinsfolk fared under Algarvian occupation. The only thing he could do to help them was hurt Mezentio’s men as much as he could.

In the darkness, his men’s heads bobbed up and down. They listened earnestly. Most of them lacked the experience to know what they were getting into. After the coming day’s fighting, though, they’d be veterans, too--the ones who wouldn’t be corpses strewn across the frozen ground.